![]() ![]() The scrollwork along the gilt sides centers a. Four painted tableaus depict four palaces with a personal connection to the Emperor: Palais de Saint-Cloud, Napoleon's permanent residence Palais de Schonbrunn in Vienna, where Napoleon signed the Treaty of Vienna Windsor Palace in England and the Palais de Sarskocello. The pair reflects Napoleon’s Neoclassical tastes, each with two silver-gilt handles terminating in a female mask, along with rims featuring a band of quatrefoil flower heads above a band alternating anthemia and masks. Striking in beauty with historic provenance, this pair of ice pails - also called glacière à chimères - represents the very best of Sèvres output. To Napoleon, these scenes, rendered by the finest porcelain factory of his time, represented his ambition as well as France’s rightful place as the world’s most powerful country. Completely unique to this Sèvres service, the “Vues Diverses” (Diverse Views) ice pails set features European palaces including examples from Russia, Austria, England as well as France. These exceptional and rare Sèvres porcelain ice pails hail from Napoleon Bonaparte's last and greatest commission in 1814, when the revered French firm fashioned the imperial ruler a dining service that embodied Napoleonic opulence. ![]() These mechanical wonders soon became highly coveted objects of luxury entertainment for the wealthy classes, setting the stage for major technological developments to come. Although the clock in place today dates to the 19th century, fragments of earlier clocks are kept in the Strasbourg Museum for Decorative Arts, including the 14th-century gilded rooster, which is considered the oldest preserved automaton in the world.Īs clockmakers of the 17th and 18th centuries invented increasingly more complex clockwork mechanisms, they turned their attention to other challenges in the form of automata, bird boxes and music boxes. In one particularly poignant group of figures, the twelve apostles parade before Jesus, who is depicted blessing each in turn. The addition of the moving figures made the religious message of the timepiece and its setting more vivid. ![]() First built in 1352-54, it was later reconstructed in 1571-74 and featured several mechanical figures, as well as a calendar, orrery and other astronomical complexities. The Strasbourg astronomical clock located in the Cathédrale Notre-Dame of Strasbourg, Alsace, France, is exemplary of the close ties between the development of the clock and the automaton. In fact, the link between the clock and the automaton is seen as early as 3000 B.C.E., when Egyptian water clocks were equipped with human figurines possessing the ability to strike a bell on the hour. The same highly complex clockwork mechanisms that powered the great timepieces of the 16th and 17th centuries informed the creation of later automata, singing bird boxes and music boxes. The history of musical machines is inextricably linked to the history of clocks. ![]()
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